Ebun Okubanjo, co-founder and CEO of Bento Africa, has resigned amid allegations of tax and pension remittance failures. In an email to the company’s board, Okubanjo announced his departure and gave up his equity and debt holdings, effectively severing all ties with the payroll and HR tech platform.
This comes as Bento faces investigations from Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Lagos State Internal Revenue Service (LIRS) over alleged non-remittance of employee taxes and pensions.
A Fresh Start with AI?
Despite the controversy, Okubanjo isn’t walking away from tech entirely. He hinted at launching Ada AI, an AI-powered sales assistant, signaling a pivot away from HR and payroll solutions. In his resignation email, he reflected on the challenges of scaling HR tech in Africa:
“If Africa adopts the Western style of taxation and remittances—these companies are gold mines. I use Gusto in the U.S. not because I want to, but because I have to. Until that happens—scale will be a challenge.”
Mounting Allegations Against Bento
Bento’s troubles escalated after Akintunde Sultan, co-founder of AltSchool, publicly accused the company of failing to remit taxes. Fuelmetrics, a digital inventory management startup, further alleged that Bento had withheld up to ₦50 million ($108,000) in tax and pension payments for 2023 and 2024.
Adding to the turbulence, some investors claim they were not immediately informed of Okubanjo’s resignation, with one stating that Bento rarely provided operational updates.
Leadership Drama and Unfinished Business
Okubanjo’s time at Bento has been anything but smooth. In 2022, he stepped down following allegations of fostering a toxic work culture, only to return months later after his successor, Chidozie Okonkwo, resigned. Even before this latest resignation, Okubanjo had reportedly attempted to hand over leadership to CTO Lede Adeniyi in 2024, but Adeniyi declined and later left the company to pursue his own ventures.
In his farewell note, Okubanjo admitted that his time at Bento was a learning experience:
“This was an education; it will probably take a lifetime to parse through all the lessons of this great failure, but as a forever learning type, I am okay with that.”
What’s Next for Bento?
Founded in 2019, Bento Africa aimed to simplify payroll automation, tax remittances, and salary advances. The company claims to have processed over $40 million in payroll for clients like Moniepoint, Paystack, Lori Systems, and Kobo360.
While Okubanjo has insisted that Bento is profitable—processing around ₦4-5 billion ($2.6 million) in salaries monthly with ₦24 million ($15,871) in revenue—some investors remain unconvinced. One commented that Bento “didn’t feel like a growing company.”
Now, with its CEO gone, regulatory scrutiny intensifying, and investor confidence shaky, Bento faces an uncertain future. The question remains: can the company recover, or will this mark the beginning of its decline?
